Apple pulls support note recommending antivirus software - Page 2

I've never had a virus or any sort of malware or even hack on my Mac. I'd say the speed of security updates is adequate.

I'm not sure Apple needs our help to come up with money making ideas.

I'm really surprised that the vast majority of people have never run anti-virus software. I always assume people have the software and just run it every once in a while. I use ClamXAV when I want to scan a file I've downloaded or received via email, but I don't have it set up to continually scan. I read a post today at Mac Guru Lounge on the Top 5 Mac Security Tips for the Holidays, which also talked about running AV software.

And have you ever found a Mac virus?

Mac AV software is useful primarily for when some PC users sends you a virus in an email attachment, and for some reason you want to forward that email to some other PC user. Your Mac's AV software won't help you, since the PC virus could never harm you anyway--but it will help protect that second PC user.

Getting a virus emailed from a PC user may not be rare, but the desire to send that email on to someone else IS rare. So, no AV software for me.



My favorites are all the ones that say "THIS is the LAST straw--I've bought 10,000 Macs and loved them, but I'm NEVER buying one again! Apple's newest recommendation on LCD cleaning cloths is so outrageous that I suddenly prefer Windows!"

i'm sure it would have been more like 'take that down now AND you're fired...'

• How do they do it in the Windows world?
• Now that statement is so stupid, I'm not even going to reply.
• Again, why don't you ask, say, Kaspersky?
• Here's an idea. Why don't you ask Apple why they posted the article in the first place if it's worthless. You are obviously so much smarter than they are.
• Someone who's not as arrogant as you are? "Impervious," right.

Sounds like you formed your opinion based on a few bad experiences with Virex and maybe Norton. Good AV programs aren't CPU or RAM hogs. Even NAV isn't as bad as it used to be. The review at Macworld says, "Previous versions of NAV were notorious resource hogs, and version 11 addresses that flaw. Scanning my test Mac’s roughly 410,000 files (give or take a GIF here and there) had little to no impact on performance. Surfing the Web, checking e-mail, and listening to music with iTunes were as snappy as I’d expect on my 2.16GHz Core Duo MacBook Pro."

Apparently, it slipped your notice that I suggested Apple write their own. Who would know best about how to protect an OS than the people who wrote it? And if you don't trust Apple to write it, why do you even trust their OS to begin with?


If you check the archives, you'll find at least one article about a vulnerability that wasn't patched for over a year.

I don't run AV software and probably won't in the foreseeable future. But the way some of you self-described Mac "experts" tsk tsk that some less knowledgeable users might want some additional security and peace of mind makes you look like the stereotypical Mac fanboys, especially the nincompoops who tout that OS X is "impervious" to malware. No OS is perfect and invulnerable.


Apparently, you are. Check the Google cache on the pulled article. Apple specifically recommends Intego VirusBarrier X5 and NAV 11 in the article. Those are current versions released in 2008, not in the "late OS 9, early OS X days."

I am sorry. I guess I should have asked somebody intelligent enough to answer the questions.

By the way, they do not make a vaccine that prevents a non-existent virus in the Windows world.

So what you are saying is and forgive me if I have mistaken you. You are pulling the info from your website claiming that you need multiple anti-virus systems, but you are basically reinforcing the article that you are removing? Sounds like someone is confused or trying to back paddle.

Anybody who thinks that antivirus software is only a virus scanning engine that uses definitions (a "vaccine") to prevent viruses is completely ignorant about security. Obviously you fit that definition.

Antivirus programs take a multi-level approach to security. They use network intrusion detection/vulnerability detection and heuristics to prevent malicious code execution (really, the term virus is dead--get over it). Traditional definition-based scanning is only used to detect malicious code already on the system and are known by the vendor. Those defs are updated quite frequently too--some vendors update definitions as often as every 15 minutes, so the virus scanning is quite effective anyway.

On Windows, traditional heuristics (such as "is this program trying to delete a system file?") are blended with statistical analysis (such as Norton Insight), static code analysis (finding memcpy from stack to exec pages, etc.), dynamic analysis (tracking which APIs a program calls, and determining if they are potentially harmful when called in that order (such as detecting key capture) and code signing verification are taken into account. These don't exist on the Mac because traditional heuristics work for now.

Intego and Norton both use these approaches, which is why Apple chose them to recommend.

I know quite well what I am talking about. Please read my statement again.

Hint: You can't prevent something that is non-existant, i.e., not happening.

Ever visited a turkey farm? Walk into a field with 25,000 turkeys and make a sudden move that startles those nearest you. They'll flap their underdeveloped wings and squawk and gabble in fright - and in 15 seconds the entire field will be in a full-throated, deafening, panicky uproar.

This thread sounds like a turkey farm.

What's not happening? Infections? Those aren't happening on Windows either dude. There hasn't been a self-spreading worm or virus since 2005 and that one was weaksauce. There IS a lot of malicious code and remotely exploitable vulnerabilities for Windows however and that's what keeps antivirus programs selling.

Mac OS X doesn't have as much malicious code basically because of its small market share. There are some--there have been a couple of trojan horses for Mac OS X (which is why Apple added Quarntine to Leopard)--but not many.

And of course, Apple is the champ when it comes to vulnerabilities. QuickTime alone had oodles and oodles of remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities, both on Windows and Mac OS X, in 2007 and 2008. MySpace QuickTime vulnerability anyone? I run IPS software on my Mac for that reason alone.

Save your typing. Abster2core knows everything there is to know. OS X is impervious to viruses, don't you know? So listen up, all you know-nothing fools. You can stop downloading and installing security updates. You don't need updates to an impervious OS. Tell them Abster2core says so.

So you are trying to tell me that there is an antivirus software that will prevent any virus on WIndows PCs, even those that have not been detected before or are not yet known to exist.

If that were the case, wouldn't you think that every Windows machine would include the software or that Microsoft would build the antiviral program into its operating system by now.

Right now as you stated, vendors are updating their antiviral code virtually immediately the identify a malicious code being generated. Not before. And they are not doing a good job of it: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/te...rity.html?_r=1

Read my comments again. I did not say that the Mac was impervious to viruses. I just asked how would you make a vaccine that prevents something for something that nobody has been able to create. Anybody that does, will end up being the riches man on earth. And maybe, Apple has already. Perhaps it is intrinsically built into the OS. Perhaps it monitors itself. Perhaps it excludes malicious intruders seaminglessly, on the fly, creating a virtually virus-free environment.

Until somebody demonstrates otherwise,…

Listen AH. I didn't say that that the OS X "is impervious to viruses."

What I said was, "How does one make an antivirus software for a computer that has been impervious to viruses?"

A major difference. Don't put words into my mouth.

Perhaps I'm misreading the Apple Support article, titled "Mac OS:
Antivirus Utilities", that has started this discussion but the
article seems to refer to Mac OS, not Mac OS X. The two are NOT
one and the same.

Casual readers, such as the press, would mistake one for the other
but I don't believe an Apple Support document would state one when
it meant the other.

An archive of the pulled article can be found at:

http://web.archive.org/web/200801131...ml?artnum=4454

Oh, you mean something can actually happen that you can't anticipate. So who needs antivirus software? Love the way you started that post. When you can't win an argument with facts, start by calling people names.


You're reading the wrong article. First, that's an outdated version from 2007. The pulled article recommended Intego VirusBarrier X5 and NAV 11, both current products released this year. Second, even if you accept it as current at the time, there was no such thing as just plain Mac OS in 2007. Classic had long since been abandoned by Apple. Even the article you cite recommends products that don't work with OS 9.

I would take direction from the likes of Christopher Breen before any AH everytime.

Do you need antivirus software?
by Christopher Breen, Macworld.com
http://www.macworld.com/article/1373...antivirus.html

Do you know what the title of the article is/was?

And I disagree with your statement "there was no such thing as just plain Mac OS in 2007". It may not be a current OS but it still exists and is usable form the "Classic" virtual machine of Mac OS X.

Intel-based Macs (basically any Mac made in the last couple of years) will not run the Classic environment. Apple specifically says they do not support it after the Powermac G5s. If you think about it, as far as Apple is concerned, there is only one Mac OS now. There's no need for them to write "Mac OS X."